Today’s Big Story

Creatine Is All the Rage

The supplement is now a longevity tool: Swole of body, swole of mind

You’ve probably heard the buzz about creatine. The powdered supplement is definitely hot right now—and not just among the bodybuilder set. True, creatine monohydrate was once a supplement marketed to gym rats and athletes, but it’s now becoming popular with everyone from biohackers to aging Americans looking for a boost in longevity and mood.

Creatine is all over social-media groups and chat rooms, discussed among everyone from middle-aged women and seniors to gym bros touting before and after pictures. But it’s not just empty buzz and TikTok trending topics. It’s currently being studied—with good preliminary results—to improve bone health, cognition, sleep, while also reducing depression and anxiety symptoms. Researchers say creatine supplements are safe, with few side effects, and they’re affordable.

As anybody who was alive in the ’90s may remember, creatine first exploded onto the scene when Swedish researchers published influential research in 1992 demonstrating creatine supplementation’s effectiveness in improving stamina and recovery during the short bursts of physical exercise. It didn’t take long after that for creatine supplements to hit the shelves of drugstores and workout gyms nationwide. And it was popular. Not only was it cheap—a 10-ounce jar of creatine costs 18 bucks on Amazon—but it was also an easy way for exercise enthusiasts to improve their performance. According to Vox, as many as one in four adults say they have used creatine … and more than $400 million worth of it is sold in the U.S. every year.

And now, studies are finding that creatine improves muscle strength and lean body mass in older adults when combined with resistance training. This is especially important for seniors who may experience a progressive loss of muscle mass and strength. Brains get a boost on creatine, too. It’s been shown to improve cognition and memory benefits—something that’s great for seniors but comes in handy for all age groups.

Abbie Smith-Ryan, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, told the Wall Street Journal that she typically takes 10 grams of creatine a day for the cognitive benefits, increasing the dose if she is traveling in order to avoid jet lag.

Trump’s Middle East Visit

His arrival comes as his family deepens its business, crypto ties in the region

President Donald Trump kicked off the first major foreign trip of his second term—an opportunity to shore up relations with a trio of key Middle Eastern allies and prove his might as a dealmaker on the world stage. He landed in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, with stops in Doha, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, later in the week. The presidential visit to the region as his children work the same part of the world for the family’s money-making opportunities puts a spotlight on Trump’s willingness to embrace foreign dealmaking as president. Despite, as the Associated Press points out, mounting concerns that doing so could tempt him to shape U.S. foreign policy in ways that benefit his family’s bottom line.

There’s all the chatter about the Qatari plane, but Trump didn’t let it stop him. The president praised Middle Eastern leaders in a speech at an investment forum, while also indicating Saudi Arabia may join the Abraham Accords and issuing a stark message to Iran amid nuclear negotiations. Trump also announced plans to lift sanctions on Syria following the fall of the Assad regime, a move that he said will “give them a chance at greatness.”

According to the Washington Post, his speech offered a “sweeping but at times contradictory vision of the role of U.S. military force in the world.” He declared his opposition to past U.S. interventions in the Middle East but also a willingness to use force to defend the United States and its allies. From the moment he got off Air Force One, pumping his fist and warmly greeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he seemed focused on securing a range of deals for the technology titans and business executives he brought with him. His hope, sources say, is that this will pump money from this oil-rich region into the American economy.

The AI Boom’s Hidden Cost

It’s draining water from areas that need it most

There’s a lot of fear and speculation about artificial intelligence’s effect on our future. Will it replace too many jobs? Will sentient computers eventually turn on humanity? But there’s a more immediate threat posed by AI that isn’t get much attention yet. But it’s exacerbating a crisis for a resource that’s vital to human life. We’re talking about water.

AI data centers, built for companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and xAI, have been criticized for their huge energy demands, but their eye-popping water usage hasn’t been as publicized. As you might recall, we’ve been experiencing a water scarcity problem in the U.S. for years, powered by overuse, waste and climate change. Now, the proliferating data centers that power AI are accelerating the crisis by sucking up exorbitant amounts of water, according to a new report at Bloomberg, with 58% of all of these facilities in the U.S. located in places of high or extremely high water stress.

As NPR points out, water is used both to cool the hardware at these server warehouses and for the “water-hungry power plants” they rely on. To put that jargon into perspective, the problem here is that the average 100-megawatt hyperscale data center in the U.S. uses about two million liters of water a day, which is the equivalent of 6,500 households, per the International Energy Agency. The kicker? Many data centers currently in the works are much larger than that. And about two thirds of the centers built or in development since 2022 are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress.

Airbnb Relaunches

‘Basically,’ the founder says, it’s now ‘the Airbnb of anything’

Nearly a decade ago, Airbnb envisioned being more than just an app to book a home for a vacation. Its latest redesign could be a major push toward becoming the kind of “end-to-end travel app,” that CEO Brian Chesky has said he wants to create.

On Tuesday, Chesky announced the company will offer the kinds of services typically found at high-end hotels and resorts—including room service, spa treatments and personal training, all bookable on Airbnb’s redesigned app. Other services could include meals prepared by professional chefs, and salon treatments like hair, nails and makeup. In other words, Airbnb is going from the business of home-sharing and short-term rentals to the business of, well, everything.

WIRED says it’s the result of the company’s (and maybe Chesky’s) midlife crisis. But experts are saying that the new offerings could make Airbnb more competitive with travel platforms such as Expedia and Kayak, as well as with the larger resort chains. “One of the reasons why people don’t always want to stay with Airbnb (is) because we didn’t necessarily have all these other activities that you could do around the stay that maybe some more traditional hospitality has,” Airbnb Chief Business Officer Dave Stephenson told CNN. “We’ve been talking about expanding beyond the core for a long time. We now finally get to show it,” he said.

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Tackling the Big Bang

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